


Silent Arrangements

by LananiA3O



Series: Batfam Week - Arkham-verse [7]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham (Video Games)
Genre: Father's Day, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 10:22:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11228982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LananiA3O/pseuds/LananiA3O
Summary: Alfred has always been happy to think of himself as a second father to Bruce and a grandfather to all of the boys, even if he would never dream of being bold enough to press the matter, so it truly is a slip of tongue when he answers Bruce’s out-of-the-blue question of what he wants for Father’s Day, with “to have all of my young masters under the same roof for once”. He should have known Bruce would take it seriously.





	Silent Arrangements

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cerusee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerusee/gifts).



> Batfam Week theme 7: Father’s Day. Aka “the big family reunion”, because nobody says no to Alfred. Set on June 18th 2017, so almost twenty months after Batman: Arkham Knight. Bruce has returned to Gotham in his new identity as Ghost, the batfam knows he’s still alive and has some contact with him, and Jason’s been working along the batkids for almost a year. Post ‘Ill Weeds Grow Apace’ and pretty much everything else I’ve written so far, for those who read my stuff, but there are no spoilers in here.
> 
> Gifted to Cerusee, because I know how much you love Alfred and his interactions with the batfam, and I am still not over just how much of a leap of faith ‘Red’ was for you. You jumped headfirst into a pit filled with hurt and only the occasional glimmer and hope, and you have stuck with me ever since. Thank you. Thank you so very, very, very much! *hugs*

Alfred did not commonly take kindly to pyromania. Today, however, was among those days when he would gladly have burned the entire house down.

The mailbox opened with a short, metallic click, spilling its over-flowing contents to his feet like an over-fed child throwing up half its lunch. Alfred’s brow furrowed in displeasure as he retrieved the envelopes that had had the decency to stay inside the metal box, before saving the remaining papers from the moisture of the morning dew sprinkled across the grass they had landed on.

For most people, collecting their mail was a start-of-the-day task. For Alfred, it was one of the last things to do before going to sleep. He crossed the spacious gardens between the gate and the villa’s front door in quick strides, while trying to ignore the ever-growing sound of chirping birds all round him and the bright glow the mansion’s walls adopted as the sun rose higher above the horizon.

The Bracken Villa had always been a strange peculiarity in Gotham. Building an exhaustively expansive mansion on the Southern mainland, far away from the smell, noise, and crime of the islands had not been what had made Walton Bracken seem like an eccentric who was more than a few cups short of a full tea set. Erecting the building in Venetian Gothic style, with its brightly-colored walls and intricate alabaster windows, and erecting it so close to Blackgate, however, had brought Bracken’s intelligence into question from the very beginning. When Gotham’s ever-persistent rain and winds had eroded the beautifully translucent windows, Bracken had not taken the hint, but had instead continued sinking a considerable amount of his fortune into repeating the same mistakes over and over.

His children, thankfully, had seen the light, and had given up on restoring the seemingly doomed and haunting building after their father’s death, and only its architectural peculiarities had saved it from being torn down by the city. Over the years, many new owners had come and gone, most of them in a horizontal position with their feet first. By the middle of the twentieth century, nobody in their right mind had wanted any part of the building. Restorations to maintain one of ‘Gotham’s architectural treasures’ had kept the building in good enough shape to be feasible for renovation. For a short while after the Blackgate riots there had even seemed to be hope for Bracken, as businesses flocked to the rather unattractive neighborhood to benefit from the expected mass of shoppers heading to the planned Blackgate Mall. Once the city council had cancelled the project and decided to keep Blackgate a prison, people had gone as swiftly as they had come, leaving behind an abandoned wasteland.

Naturally, Master Bruce had almost instantly decided on the villa as their new ‘home’ upon their return to Gotham. The now abandoned subway station provided a perfect base of operations, shielded from curious eyes and wide enough to accommodate the Batmobile and all of Ghost’s gadgets, suits, and other equipment, and thanks to the many ghost stories revolving around Bracken, and its proximity to Blackgate, very few people ever bothered to come anywhere near the area. As a consequence, no one had batted an eye when ‘Alan Davis’ had bought up the villa and its surrounding area. If Alfred had to take a guess, everyone had probably assumed that Mr. Davis was nothing but a foolish, newly-made millionaire, who had nothing better to do than waste his money on a doomed project and die an untimely death within the six months of the purchase.

 _Well, it has been almost sixteen months now_ , Alfred thought as he stuffed the mail into the grocery bags he had left on the counter just inside the main door, picked up the bags, and headed for the kitchen. Almost sixteen months since he and Master Bruce had returned to Gotham, and both Mr. ‘Alan Davis’ and Mr. ‘James Copper’ were still alive. He walked into the kitchen ready to simply stow away the food and call it a day, only to find Master Bruce standing in front of the fridge, one hand hanging limp by his side, the other tracing the paper pinned to the door. His face would have looked completely stoic and impassionate to any outsider, but Alfred could see the turmoil of emotions in the flicker in his eyes and in the taut line of his mouth. The emotional part of him felt heartbreakingly sad at the sight, but eventually, it was the rational part that won out.

“Master Bruce, please don’t touch the drawing,” Alfred said as he put the bags down onto the kitchen table, removed the mail, and started stowing away the food. The fruits were first, as always, and he made sure to fill the hanging basket next to the freezer carefully, ensuring that none of the apples, oranges, plums, and pears would bruise. “It would be highly regrettable if you were to smudge the pencils.”

The hand withdrew, but the gaze remained. Slightly unfocused, almost melancholic. “This is Jason’s work, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Master Bruce,” he stopped halfway through portioning the fresh chicken and beef he had procured at the market to take another look at the picture for himself. “Master Todd drew this while recovering from his injuries this January.” The memory was still fresh and cruel in his mind.

2016 had been a rather dismal year through and through, with each month Alfred and Master Bruce had spent away from the children leaving them more miserable than the last. The only difference between the two of them had been that Alfred had made no secret of his misery and displeasure, even going so far as to voice his opinion in occasional, sharp, little stabs, in the vain hope that Master Bruce would see the light eventually and decide to reunite with his family, or at least let them no that he was not bloody dead.

Unfortunately, Master Bruce had done no such thing, leaving it to Master Todd – the only one among the children who had been one-hundred percent convinced that neither Bruce nor Alfred were dead – to track them back to Bracken and forcefully reunite Master Bruce with Master Grayson and Master Drake. How on earth he had done it and how long it had taken him to do it, Alfred did not even wish to imagine. All he knew was that he regretted that he had not been there, on Thanksgiving, when the painful reunion had happened. Alfred had had to leave Gotham for England only a month prior, to look after his little sister, Margaret, in the last weeks of her illness.

He had returned two months later, just three days after her burial, only to nearly have to bury one of his grandchildren as well.

It had been the night between December 17th and 18th when Waylon Jones had ambushed Master Todd and dragged him back to the toxic ruin that remained of ACE Chemicals. If it had not been for Master Grayson and Master Drake instantly dropping what they had been doing in order to save their brother, Master Todd would have died. _Again_. The thought still left a sour taste in Alfred’s mouth. How quickly his relief at hearing Master Grayson’s bright, cheerful voice through the comms had morphed into thinly veiled anger at Master Bruce for not informing him of his reunion with _all_ his sons, and then into bottomless horror and fear at the thought of losing Master Todd once again...

The next eight weeks had seemed like some of the longest of his life, as he had done his utmost to help Master Drake, Miss Gordon-Drake, and Master Grayson to keep Master Todd confined in the newly-rebuilt Manor atop Crest Hill, to grant him the chance to rest and heal that he would almost certainly have denied himself, if given half a choice. It had been a balancing act from start to finish, with more ups and downs then a rollercoaster.

A little more than a month after his near death and just a few days after having had the cast on his right arm removed, Master Todd had finally convinced Alfred to let him escape from the manor, in spite of his injuries, in spite of the ghastly weather outside, in spite of all good reason, really, even if only for a short while. They had ended up hunched under the roof of the rose garden’s gazebo, listening to the howling of the winds and watching the white flurries descending from the sky, when Alfred had had the sudden, practically mad idea to ask Master Todd if he would mind drawing the pair of tiny bats hanging from the rafters using the sketch pad Alfred had given him for Christmas. In a bout of even greater madness, Master Todd had not only agreed and proceeded to go through with the task despite the cold, but he had also named the bats and the resulting picture ‘Babs and Tim’.

There had never been a doubt in Alfred’s mind that this drawing deserved a spot on the fridge, where he would be able to see it, marvel at it, every day, same as the photograph of Master Drake and Miss Gordon-Drake by Crest Hill Port, the Flying Graysons magnet given to him by Master Grayson upon his departure from Wayne Manor, and the Rorschach-like sketch Alfred had rescued from Master Todd’s old room just before setting the manor on fire, to be reduced to nothing but cinder.

“It looks unfinished,” Master Bruce finally said, as he started unpacking little boxes of rice and pasta from the bags.

Alfred quickly moved the bag out of his reach and stored the items away himself. The last time Master Bruce had ‘helped’ him sort in fresh supplies in the kitchen, it had taken him almost half a week to find everything he needed again.

He would be lying if he said that that memory was the only reason for his sudden brusqueness, though.

“Of course it is unfinished,” Alfred explained as he finally sorted in the portioned fish and meat. “He was drawing this in the middle of a blizzard. I did not want the boy to freeze off his fingers, and neither did ‘Tim, the bat’ apparently. He fluttered off before Master Todd had the chance to detail all the textures and shadows.”

His words were followed by a long period of silence as Master Bruce sat down and continued to stare at the picture. When he finally answered, his voice was almost imperceivably small. “It is still a very beautiful picture.”

Alfred paused for a moment, a carton of milk in one hand, a box of eggs in the other, and looked at the drawing once more. Master Todd could have thrown a pint of random paint at the paper and called it a surrealistic masterpiece, as far as Alfred was concerned. It was proof that he was still alive. That in and of itself made this picture a gift. The fact that Master Todd had gone above and beyond the call of duty and actually turned the sketch into an almost life-like depiction of a real scene was really just icing on the cake.

“Yes, it is, sir. It is.”

He returned to his task in silence, while Master Bruce finally took his eyes off the paper started sorting through the mail instead. Alfred was content to let him have that. Everything that had been set up in relation to this coffin of a villa had been in Alan Davis’ name, after all. ‘James Copper’ was merely a lodger, as far as anyone outside of this house was concerned.

Not even halfway through the stack of papers, Master Bruce’s mouth had curled downwards ever so slightly in a minute display of serious malcontent.

“More bills, Master Bruce?”

“Bills I would not mind, Alfred,” Bruce replied sourly. “If it is one thing I’m not lacking for, it’s money.”

“My word,” Alfred agreed. It was true. Even though the sums that had been funneled off into hidden accounts in case the Knightfall protocol would ever need to be activated had been slim by comparison to the overall Wayne Fortune, it was still more than enough to live comfortably for a lifetime or two. “Then what is it that has drawn your ire?”

Master Bruce scowled as he pushed a stack brightly colored brochures and anonymously addressed letters across the table. “Father’s Day.”

“Ah.”

There truly was nothing else to say. Alfred picked up the stack quietly and discarded it straight into the paper trash can.

Father’s Day had not been a good day in the Wayne household for many, many years. The first year after Thomas Wayne’s death, the third Sunday of June had been a downright horrible experience that had ended with nine-year-old Master Bruce curled up in his parents’ old bed, dabbed from head to toe in his father’s cologne, and crying his eyes out over the repeated realization that his father was gone forever. With every year that had followed, the day had become less painful, but it was a wound that had never fully healed.

In the years of Master Bruce’s absence, while he had been training to become Batman, Alfred had taken it upon himself to try to connect with the other side of his own family at least, but that, too, had ended rather disappointingly. He could count the number of times per year that he had spoken to his estranged daughter Julia on one hand.

Master Bruce had eventually returned, and not too long after that, Master Grayson had entered their lives. As cruel and sad as the circumstances that had led to said addition had been, Alfred still thought of it as a gift from heaven, an undeserved blessing for both of them. Master Grayson had hardly been in a very positive place upon arriving at the manor, yet he had still managed to spread a light and cheer that had permeated through every inch, every second of both their lives. For the first time in a long time, Christmas, New Year’s, Father’s Day, and birthdays had become a truly joyous experience, and Alfred was infinitely grateful for it.

Predictably, Master Grayson’s departure and the consequent Father’s Day spent without him had seemed even more agonizing, a pain that was only mediated through the arrival of Master Todd, whose presence at the manor had been more difficult and less cheerful, yet had somehow seemed even more rewarding, as the poor boy’s physical and emotional well-being had visibly improved with each month that had passed. Losing him had left a hole in Master Bruce’s heart and a crater in Alfred’s, and even though Master Drake had done his best to lead both of them back into the light, even though he had eventually brought his own brand of bliss and happiness to their lives, those wounds had never fully healed.

Leaving Gotham after Batman’s unmasking had been the final nail in the coffin. Father’s Day 2016 had been the most miserable Father’s Day Alfred had ever lived through, an experience he did not wish to repeat under any circumstances, and yet, with less than half a week to go, this looked to be their soon-to-strike fate.

Consequently, he could only credit his ability to not drop whatever foodstuff he had been holding to a lifetime of well-trained reflexes, when Master Bruce looked at him from the other side of the table, far more awake than a man who had only gone to bed at sunrise should be, and asked him:

“Alfred, is there anything you want for Father’s Day this year?”

“Me, sir?” Alfred raised an eyebrow at that, while his brain went snowballing with the question.

_Why, I shall wish for the Joker to burn in the lowest circle of hell. I shall wish for all of Master Todd’s memories of his time in that madman’s hands to be gone and lost forever, together with the scars he gained from it. I shall wish for Miss Gordon-Drake to wake up, suddenly miraculously healed and able to run, jump, and dance. I shall wish for Mr. and Mrs. Wayne to be restored to life, same as Mr.s and Mrs. Grayson and Drake. I shall wish for Margaret and Helen to be alive still, and for eternal peace and happiness throughout the world._

“Far be it from me to impose my expectations upon this universe,” Alfred eventually stated.

Master Bruce had either not understood the hint – unlikely – or had simply chosen to ignore it.

“I mean it, Alfred.” For a moment, he sounded almost like that pouting three-year-old Alfred had met all those years ago, when he had followed his father’s dying wish and left England for Gotham. “I have been making demands – horrible demands – off you for more than a year now and I am sorry.”

That stumped him. Alfred blinked at him, eyes narrowing just a little in an attempt to see if maybe he had missed some non-verbal clue, but there was nothing in Master Bruce’s face that spoke of hidden intentions. If anything at all, he looked tired.

“If I told you, would you finally agree to go to bed and get some rest from the ghastly night you have just had?”

Master Bruce nodded slowly, and Alfred gave a small sigh as he folded the paper grocery bags and sent them the same way as all the Father’s Day mail, burying the offending items under a mountain of brown, recycled carton.

“I suppose the closest thing I have to an even remotely realistic wish would be to have all of my young masters under the same roof for once,” Alfred said as he wiped down the kitchen table. “But not to worry, Master Bruce. I have no illusions concerning the likelihood of said event occurring. I shall not be heartbroken if and when it fails to happen.”

***

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday came and went without much excitement outside of the usual mayhem that so commonly gripped Gotham. Edward Nigma seemed to have finally, successfully cemented himself as the most annoying blight upon their city that simply refused to die, but he was nothing Gotham’s bat-themed vigilantes could not handle. As a matter of fact, if Alfred was not mistaken, Master Todd had actually quite enjoyed his latest brushes with the megalomaniac narcissist. Harvey Dent seemed to have developed an intense hatred for Robin, ever since his first defeat at his unaided hands more than a year ago, and Oswald Cobblepot’s animosity towards Nightwing had long-since blossomed into full-blown nemesis status, but this was nothing Master Bruce’s sons could not handle.

Alfred took comfort in that. It had not been an easy week, but it had not been particularly hard either. As a matter of fact, some semblance of normality, of routine, had finally returned to their lives, and while that was not ideal, it was better than expected. He was not going to argue.

He left for the market an hour before sunrise on Sunday morning, careful to make sure that the latex mask he now had to wear for public appearances was securely in place, same as his accents. He had never considered himself more fortunate for his extensive acting experience than he had had after their return to Gotham.

The market was almost empty at this hour of day, and ‘James Copper’ made his way from stand to stand quickly, gathering up the usual supplies for his weekly shopping. The sellers knew him by now, and did not mind that he arrived just before the official opening hours, especially since money gained before the registers opened and the managers arrived tended to end up being money that no manager ever got to see, let alone the IRS. In return for his silence and his under-the-counter money, ‘James Copper’ always received the freshest goods and sometimes even the best discounts, proving that life was not always entirely, unjustly unfair.

He returned to find the mailbox mercifully empty – it was Sunday after all – and instead headed straight for the main door. The door opened and closed again with its familiar creaking sound and loud snap, further cementing the feeling of sheer averageness of this day inside his stomach.

Then the smell hit him.

Something, some kind of meat, was frying in a pan. Underneath the fatty, greasy scent hung a note of vinegar and lemon.

Panic gripped him as his mind jumped to the most logical conclusion, and he quickly decided to forego slipping out of his coat and mask. He did shrug out of his shoes, nonetheless, if only on sheer six decades of trained behavior, before crossing the hall to the kitchen in fast steps. Any day Master Bruce entered the kitchen was a dark day. When Alfred had toyed with the thought of burning this place down for what it represented, he had not actually meant for anyone to go through with it.

“Master Bruce, what on Earth—“

His feet ground to a halt the moment he saw him and so did his tongue. One of the two large bags slipped from his hand at the same time as two strong legs dashed forward, a pair of muscular arms stretching out to grab the bag just before it hit the ground. There was a slight grin in the two glacial blue eyes underneath that fringe of black hair with a patch of white as the young man in front of him straightened up once more.

“Well, that was close.”

“Master Todd?”

“Live and in color.” The second bag was lifted from him as if it were filled with feathers. “Gimme a second to turn off the stove so I don’t burn down this crypt, okay?”

Alfred watched, his mouth stuck between a fond smile and shocked openness, as Master Todd returned to the table, set down both bags. and turned off the stove. He gave a cursory glance around the kitchen, and had to swallow hard.

There were sausages frying in one of the pans on the stove and chicken-bellpepper-onion skewers in the other. Something was boiling in the big pot on the right back burner. The oven was on, too, and on the counters next to the stove, three salad bowls stood neatly arranged. He could make out kale, corn salad, tomato, cucumber, and pieces of radish inside of the glass bowl, the contents of the two plastic bowls remained a mystery.

“What on Earth... I must be dreaming.”

“Yeah, I know the feeling...” Master Todd tasted a spoonful of whatever was in the big pot – it looked like some kind of pea soup with celery in it – and wrinkled his nose in confusion, before holding the spoon in Alfred’s direction. “Alfie, can you help me with this, please? I’ve been seasoning stuff for the last hour-and-a-half and I think my nose and taste buds have given up.”

He approached slowly and took a careful sip, while Master Todd’s frown slowly melted into neutral confusion. It _was_ green pea soup with celery and spring onions, and it tasted absolutely delicious. Except... “I think it could use a dash of tarragon.”

“Tarragon. Of course. I’m an idiot.”

He dropped the wooden spoon back onto the plate next to the stove and went straight for the spice cabinet. At last, Alfred found the clarity of mind to remove the mask and coat he had been wearing. He stored both away in the wardrobe by the entrance, then returned to the kitchen to find Master Todd still hovering from counter to counter, cutting, slicing, dicing, mincing, blending, and crushing various vegetables, fruits, seeds, and nuts, as if that were what he was always doing in the Bracken kitchen at six in the morning.

First things first, Alfred thought as he started sorting the contents of the shopping bags into their respective shelves in the cupboards, fridge, freezer. Perhaps he really was hallucinating this. It had been a long week. Perhaps he was not. Either way, the meat and fish would spoil if left out in the open for too long. In between, he caught a look at the other two bowls – potato salad with eggs and vinegar, and pasta salad with bell peppers, zucchini and what looked like home-made hummus – as well as the stove, in which a blueberry-cherry pie was quietly rising.

Alfred raised an eyebrow. “No cherry-chocolate cake, Master Todd?”

He knew he had misstepped by the way his hands stilled instantly, the knife half-sunk into the kiwi fruit he had been dicing.

“Joker gave me cherry-chocolate cake laced with Joker venom for my sixteenth birthday.” His voiced sounded strangely detached, but Alfred could tell from the haunted look that ghosted across his eyes that the memory still hit him hard. “I don’t think I’m gonna have cherry-chocolate cake any time soon.”

There were still a few items to be stored away, but Alfred could not have cared less. He ditched the bread buns he had been holding on the nearest counter and approached his unexpected guests with open arms. Thankfully, fortune seemed to have smiled on him today, and Master Todd did not evade. Instead, he put down the knife and turned into the hug. Alfred gave a quick sigh.

“Notice how you said ‘any time soon’ and not ‘ever again’, Master Todd.”

He could feel the smile, even if he couldn’t see it. “Happy Father’s Day, Alfie. It’s great to see you. I hope you don’t mind me messing up your kitchen.”

“Messing up?” Alfred loosened the hug and gave another look around the kitchen. He had no doubt that all counters had been used at some point, but he also knew they had been wiped down again. Some of them still glistened with a thin film of water and soap. “My dear boy, if you think this is a messed up kitchen, you clearly had never seen Master Grayson’s old apartment.”

“I did actually,” Master Todd grumbled and a shudder when through his body. “Cleaned the place up, too, once. Felt like showerin’ in bleach and disinfectant afterwards.”

“Come on, Jason, I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.” Miss Gordon-Drake smiled at them from the door to the dining room, before coming over to offer a hug of her own. “I’m sorry we just barged in here without informing you, Alfred, but we wanted it to be a surprise.”

“I’d hardly call that ‘barging in’, Barb. B gave you the fu—dging keys, remember?”

“Did he now?”

Alfred raised an eyebrow at both of them, then went to finish his bi-weekly routine of sorting in the groceries. He watched out of the corner of his eyes as Master Todd retrieved a fourth salad bowl from the cupboard next to the stove and proceeded to toss in the kiwi fruit, pineapple, banana, and mango he had been chopping. In the meantime, Mrs. Gordon-Drake took it upon herself to carry an assortment of knives, spoons, and forks into the dining room. Even at a quick glance, he could see that the table had been set for six, and despite the rational voice in the back of his mind that told him not to interpret too much into it, his heart gave a little jump at the implication.

“Are we expecting more guests?”

“Tim is upstairs, taking a shower and getting changed.” Mrs. Gordon-Drake answered as she went back to retrieve what looked like four fresh cans of protein-shakes from the fridge. If Alfred had to take guess, they probably followed the recipes he had provided during Master Todd’s enforced recovery at the manor.

“I told Dick to stall Bruce for a while, so I could prepare the food without having him hover around me like some ominous shadow of doom,” Master Todd added, before sighing at the sight of the nearby clock hanging above the doorway to the hall. It was almost half past seven. “They should be here any minute now.”

Master Todd. Master Grayson. Master Drake. Mrs. Gordon-Drake. Master Bruce. Six plates on the table.

_“I suppose the closest thing I have to an even remotely realistic wish would be to have all of my young masters under the same roof for once.”_

The thought that this was actually going to happen struck him with a sudden clarity like he had not felt in months and Alfred found himself sinking into the nearest chair with a hand clasped over his mouth. Master Todd dropped the prongs he had been using to turn the skewers in the pan and was by his side almost instantly. Alfred doubted the crouching position could have been kind to his ten-times-broken right ankle, but if that gave him any grief, Master Todd did not show it. Instead, he stayed perfectly still and perfectly balanced as he placed one hand on Alfred’s shoulder.

“Is everything ok, Alfie? Did...” His gaze darted through the room quickly, as if he were looking for nothing and everything at once. “Did I say or do something wrong?”

“No.” His answer came just as fast. Master Todd had always been swift to blame himself for everything under the sun. He was not going to let him. Not now. Not for this. “No, you did not, my dear boy... It is simply that I had a talk about this day with Master Bruce earlier this week. I told him I should very much like to see all of you under one roof together. I just was not truly expecting it to happen.”

Master Todd chuckled at that. “Seriously, Alfie? You raised a billionaire who went on to dress like a bat to beat the crap out of criminals in his spare time, then adopted three kids and trained another to do the same, and ended up faking both his death and yours, and _this_ is what shocks you?”

“Well, I don’t know about you,” Mrs. Gordon-Drake mentioned as she took up his duty of turning the skewers and the sausages to prevent them from burning. “But I was pretty shocked about Bruce’ invitation, too. Maybe he hit his head.”

“Or maybe he just finally got his cowl out of his butt and –“

Whatever else Master Todd had been planning to say was cut short as the door to the cellar opened with a loud creak. Master Todd was back at the stove in an instant, stirring the soup as if nothing had happened, while his sister-in-law collected an assembly of six glasses from the counter next to the fridge. Alfred took a deep breath, stood up, straightened the lapels of his jacket, and turned around just in time to see Master Bruce freeze halfway through the door into the kitchen.

The look on his face was priceless.

“Jason?”

“Who did you expect? The tooth fairy?”

That seemed to give him pause. Suddenly, without the suit and the cowl, Master Bruce looked a good foot smaller, not to mention completely at a loss as to how to handle the little flock of grown-up children gathering in his kitchen. Master Drake coming down the stairs from his shower and entering through the dining room did not make it any better.

“Morning, Bruce. You sure took your time.”

More silence. More blinking. Clearly Master Bruce had not expected this occurrence any more than Alfred himself had.

“I’m glad you could all make it,” was what he eventually blurted out and Master Todd scoffed as he tested the soup one last time.

“Yeah? Well don’t get too cocky. I’m only here for the food. And Alfie.”

“He’s also happy to see you, Bruce,” Master Grayson translated with a smile on his face as he pushed past his father to get into the kitchen and closer to the stove. The sight brought a smile to Alfred’s face. The smell of sugary baked goods had always been the fasted way to lure Master Grayson into the kitchen. “Hey, what’s that awesome-smelling pie you’ve got—“

The look Master Todd shot him as he resolutely stepped in front of the stove with the soup spoon in one hand and a knife in the other was one of pure murder.

“Richard John Grayson... get out of the kitchen while I’m cooking or I swear I’m gonna break you arm.”

“Jason—“

“You, too, Bruce.” If anything at all, Master Bruce’s insistence to get involved had only seemed to harden Master Todd’s resolve, if the scowl on his face was any indication. “You are both disasters in the kitchen and I don’t want you anywhere near Alfred’s silverware.”

Alfred felt his lips curve into a slight smile. “I am afraid to say I shall have to concur with Master Todd. Please take a seat in the dining room, if you will. We shall both be with you shortly.”

To his surprise – and everyone else’s, if he was not mistaken – Master Bruce actually relented, backing out of the kitchen the same way he had come and entering the dining room through the main hallway. Master Drake and Master Grayson each came around to offer Alfred a quick hug and proper Father’s Day greeting, before joining him. Whether to keep him company or to make sure that he would actually stay there, Alfred did not know, but it did not matter. What mattered was that once Mrs. Gordon-Drake had left with the glasses, he was once more alone in the room with Master Todd.

Alfred watched him turn off the stove plates quickly, before going for collecting what looked like a creamy dip with reddish-brown sprinkles from one of the lower shelves in the fridge and pouring it out over the tropical salad. Alfred could not remember ever having prepared anything like it in his kitchen.

“A new recipe, Master Todd?”

“Aliño chili-canela,” Master Todd replied with a quick nod. “It’s a Santa Priscan recipe made with natural yoghurt, cinnamon, and chili. And don’t worry: I used the really, really mild chili this time.”

“Very thoughtful of you, Master Todd.” Alfred had to suppress a grin at the memory of the chili-spiked smoothie Master Todd had served up for Master Drake last January. It was a miracle any of his young master were still willing to eat anything another put on the table.

“Alfred, may I ask you a question?”

“Of course, Master Todd.” Alfred looked on quietly as he filled six little bowls with an equal amount of the Santa Priscan salad.

“The pictures on the fridge...” Alfred did not even have to look. He should have known that this would come up eventually. “I understand why you put the one with the two bats there. I drew that for you, at your request, and I don’t regret that. But the other one...” Master Todd gave a long, hard glance at the Rorschach-like ink splotch imitation that looked remotely like a curled up person surrounded by sharp impacts of rain against asphalt. “Why that one? Is that how you remembered me?”

“Of course it is,” Alfred answered as calmly as he could. He would only have one chance at this. He knew Master Todd well enough to be aware of that. He would have to choose his words wisely. “At first glance, it looks like the work of a very dark, disturbed, and troubled mind. Then you look closer, and you realize that it is technically flawless, demonstrating great talent and attention to detail, as well as full of emotional weight. Not to mention that this was the first time you channeled any of your nightmares into a productive, therapeutic outlet, rather than your fight or flight instincts. That took great determination and courage, not to mention a considerable amount of trust in whoever would come across this picture.”

He bit his lip for a moment.

“I think it is perfect and while I have said and done a lot of things in my life that I wished I had never had to do, saving this picture from the inferno at Wayne Manor is not one of them.”

That drew a short, sad laugh from Master Todd. “So what do you regret, Alfred? I remember you said your epic lecture towards Bruce on New Year’s was one of the top three. What are the other two?”

Alfred waited until he had finished distributing all the salad evenly among the bowls, then plugged the sink to let hot water and soap collect in it. The soothing rush of the water was strangely mundane and comforting against the weight of that question.

“That was number three, yes. Number two would have been following my father’s dying wish to work for Mr. and Mrs. Wayne.” He accepted the bowl Master Todd handed to him with a quick nod.

“I am not quite confident if I have ever told you this story, but I was the oldest of five siblings. My mother had been miserable in Gotham ever since we had moved there at my father’s request, and when the younger of my two sisters, Helen, died as an innocent bystander in a bank robbery at age seven, that was the final straw. My mother moved us back to England. My father stayed. Their marriage broke apart and for the next six years of my life, I was the only father figure my other sister, Margaret, and my two little brothers, had. Our father tried to stay in touch, but mother took up the habit of destroying his letters within minutes of them arriving in the mail.”

The first bowl was done, and he was not surprised when Master Todd handed him the dressing bowl as well. “Even as I joined the military and later the SAS, I tried to make every effort to continue being a good older brother and mentor to my siblings. Then my father died. His last wish was that one of us take his place in serving the Waynes. My siblings refused. They did not want to go anywhere near Gotham. They tried to talk me out of leaving.”

“But you left anyway.”

“For the sake of Mr. and Mrs. Wayne and their three-year-old boy, who was heartbroken at the loss of my father,” Alfred admitted. “I had been twelve, when we had left Gotham, and I had been the only one old enough to remember the Waynes. They asked, begged me to stay. So did Master Bruce. All my siblings were grown up by now, old enough to live their own lives, to understand my choice. Or at least so I thought. The truth is neither of my two brothers ever spoke another word to me. My sister Margaret remained in sporadic contact with me until my own ‘death’, at the expense of any contact with my brothers. When she was on her death bed at the end of last year, I had to go there under a separate identity, pretending to be one of her caretakers rather than her brother, because I am legally dead.”

He finished the second bowl and dried his hands off with a nearby tea towel. Draining the water would be pointless. As soon as they were done with the entrée salad, there would be a pot of soup to dish out and clean.

“I do believe that I made the right choice by full-filling my father’s last wish and that it was necessary, but I do regret the consequences it had on my family in England.”

Mater Todd nodded, just as the egg-timer on the microwave started loudly announcing the pie to be ready. He turned off the oven and flicked the main switch for the stove’s power supply to be extra-sure, then turned back to Alfred. “Well, the older of your two brothers, Wilfred, did show up for your funeral, as did your daughter, so I guess you’re not the only one with regrets. What’s number one?”

“The fact that I followed through with your father’s plan to leave Gotham, of course,” Alfred replied tersely with a quick glance at the assembly in the dining room. Everyone looked tired and hungry, but at least no one seemed ready to walk out any minute, that was good enough, all things considered. He brought up one hand and ran it through the black hair with the white streak quickly.

“If I had known that you had been the Arkham Knight, if I had known that Master Bruce did not even bother to tell either one of his children that he was not actually going to die, I would never have agreed to activate the Knightfall protocol. I wish I had been here for you. For all of you.”

“You’re here now, Alfie,” Master Todd answered with the tiniest hint of a genuine smile. “That’s what matters.”

“I am here,” Alfred said. “And so, are you, Master Todd. We _all_ are. And that gives me more happiness than I had expected to receive any time soon. Now...” He reached for one of the trays set on top of the fridge and started arranging the little bowls of salad neatly. “Shall we go feed those hungry mouths that I so callously invited into this house?”

Master Todd gave a slight chuckle at that. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”


End file.
